(Photo: Mom.Milk.Baby, Etsy)

Though Etsy sellers may no longer peddle drugs or sell racist dolls without provoking a Change.org petition, they're continuing on with heads held high in the adorkable tradition of selling mildly creepy DIY products. A new trend gaining popularity, according to the Daily Mail, is refashioning breast milk into jewelry, because of course.

Allicia, the proprietor of Mommy Milk Creations, has actually been selling pendants made of breast milk since 2007, and claims to have developed a special technique that will keep your pendant from turning yellow or spotty. All you have to do is send her a ziplock bag full of your breast milk and she will put it through a five-step process that will turn your milk into "beads," which she then embeds in jewelry.

Other sellers have also taken to memorializing breast milk in totally not weird ways, including Etsy stores Hollyday Designs and Milk.Mom.Baby, which offers an at-home breastmilk preservation kit.

Mothers: finding new ways to embarrass their offspring since the dawn of time.

Meanwhile, pour out a little bit of Earl Grey for Regretsy, as the craft-snark blog is shuttering. Wrote founder April Winchell in a blog post: "After three and a half years, I've said everything I have to say about it, and now we're just Bedazzling a dead horse." [The Daily Dot]

The nice thing about a Yahoo earnings call, if you're Kara Swisher, is that you don't have to hide in the vents to hear what Marissa Mayer is saying. The good news: Yahoo beat Wall Street estimates. The bad: Revenue was flat, and oh, can someone do something about that pre-call elevator music? [AllThingsD]

That was a short-lived experiment: Months after Tumblr gave users the option of paying $5 to pin content to the top of followers' dashboards, the pay-to-pin feature has been abandoned. [The Daily Dot]

This hardware will self-destruct: the Pentagon is interested in military hardware "capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner"—the better to keep enemies from collecting and reverse-engineering the detritus of war. [Wired]

Less than a week after Twitter launched Vine, the video-sharing app it acquired last year, the company went back to the acquisition well, announcing a deal for Crashlytics, which tracks bad code when apps fail. [Business Insider]

Mr. Vinh. (Photo: Tumblr.com)

Shopping Site Goes Shopping Back in 2011, Khoi Vinh, the former design director for The New York Times’s website, attempted to launch an iPad collage maker called Mixel that even Taylor Swift would love. The interface was kind of clunky, and the company soon pivoted to a smoother iPhone product, which became fairly successful. And now Mixel has been acquired by the custom product giant Etsy.

No, you won't be creating any collages of your twee collectables any time soon. According to AllThingsD, The Mixel team is being acquired for its stellar mobile talents. Mr. Vinh and his cofounder Scott Ostler, along with employees Akiva Leffert and Roy Stanfield, will all make the move to Etsy's Brooklyn offices. Mixel will be shutting down the social side of its app, but will leave up its collage-making tool. In an email to Betabeat, Etsy CTO Kellan Elliot-McCrea explains, “We expect our mobile traffic to surpass desktop traffic by the end of 2014." 

Not Even Punking You Kanye West's favorite Pinterest-like site, The Fancy, just expanded its subscription box service, originally a monthly plan that gives you $60 of curated goods for $30. Now everyone, not just the minds at Fancy, can choose a bunch of items to send out to their adoring fans. Fancy gets to split the profits with you, of course. The first partner is Ashton Kutcher with his A+ Box, which includes brain-shaped ice cubes and mustache-shaped Band-Aids.

Iowa Now Trendiest State Dwolla, the fast-growing money transfer app, reached a pretty big milestone this week. The company announced its partnership with the Iowa state government to help modernize the state's tax system. Starting soon, businesses will be able to use Dwolla to pay the cigarette stamp tax, which accounts for about $100 million of Iowa's revenue each year. In a blog post, the company seems to be looking to the future already: "And while you may not be able to pay your taxes using Dwolla today, you are going to start seeing our logo pop up here and there as the state looks to modernize the payment experiences and do better business for the 21st century taxpayer and economy (e.g. mobile payments, low-cost transfers, and real-time notifications, etc.)."

Norman Mailer Badge Foursquare recently partnered up with Voice Media Group, the company that was spun off from Village Voice Media, now without the icky Backpage.com. The Voice's Places event data will now be syndicated on Foursquare and the company's highly popular "Best Of" will be integrated into the service as well.

Let's All Go to the Lobby: Dogfish Accelerator, the first accelerator program for film producers, launched this week. Started by a former TechStars associate, James Belfer, the accelerator puts film teams in a three-month intensive training and networking program and gives them $18,000 in seed funding, along with free office space. But why wouldn't you just try a Kickstarter and go to Sundance?

Award Tour See.Me, the social network for artists, is currently running a bunch of contests for its 600,000 users. There's $125,000 in grants and awards up for grabs. The site has just announced that founding Tribe Called Quest member Q-Tip is going to serve as a judge for its music competition. In a press release sent to Betabeat, William Etundi, founder and CEO of See.Me, said, "Our simple goal is support creative people with recognition, shows and grants and we are super excited to bring Q-Tip into that process.”

Fund My Relationship Coming Soon If you've ever wanted your neighbors to pick your next significant other, then you should try ChainDate. The site is billing itself as the world's first site that uses crowdsourcing to find you a match. Every user gets "Wingpeople," users who like the same type of person that you do. The site matches you up with people that these similar-minded users thought were cute too. Sounds a bit competitive.

Nothing Really Matters The mobile analytics firm Adeven claims that over 435,000 new apps will be added to the iOS app store in 2013. That's too many apps to fit on your tiny phone, but don't worry, you won't even notice most of them. The firm also reports that 60 perecent of apps are "zombie apps," or apps that go completely undiscovered by iPhone users. A Zombie App Survival Guide is surely forthcoming.

Stuff Michelle Obama Likes  Whole Kids Foundation, PACT and Indiegogo are teaming up to help build urban sustainable gardens across the country. Leaders raise $2,500 on Indiegogo pages and Whole Kids Foundation will provide additional help like gardening materials. Crowdfunding kind of saves the day again.

Help Out, Y'all LuckyAnt, the crowfunding platform for small businesses, is hosting a very large crowdfunding campaign for 9 South Street Seaport businesses to help them out in the enduring disaster of hurricane Sandy. There's 19 days left in the project to rebuild historic Front Street and over $10,000 has already been raised.

Wake Up, Loser If waking up to the blaring sound of beeping or shocking radio static isn't for you, then you should download Mood O'Clock. It's the first emotional alarm app for Android, which lets you choose what kind of mood you want to wake up to. Depending on what you choose, the app will play you a corresponding morning soundtrack. We need a setting to help us wake up feeling like a brogrammer for those special Saturdays.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Sooooo...it's that time of the year again. SXSW (a.k.a. Spring Break for Geeks) is right around the corner, running March 8 to 12 in Austin, Texas. And you know what that means: Parties, parties 'n more parties!! :) So, once again, we're putting together what we hope will be THE definitive guide to all this year's SXSW Interactive parties. We'll be updating this list regularly, so check back often. And email me if you're organizing an event or a party.

Of course, I'll be at SXSW ... attending all (or as many as humanly possible) of the amazing parties, mixers, networking events, lounges, panels, keynotes, BBQs, nuclear taco nights, concerts, happy hours, karaokes, food trucks, block parties and what-have-you.

So if you can't make it down to Austin this year but still wanna get the word out about your amazing startup / company / firm / service / app / project, you can do so. How, you ask? Well, by sponsoring my Red Tie of course, and covering it in your company's awesome logo stickers and giving me your company's elevator pitch. If you're interested, shoot me an email at gary@garysguide.com for more details.

In the meantime, here's my blog post / highlights from last year's SXSW to give you a little taste of what to expect.

FYI, next week is probably the most exclusive hackathon of the year. Google's Project Glass will be holding a two-day hackathon (February 1 to 2) in New York City that'll allow developers to get an early look at Glass so they can start developing for the platform. Google engineers will be on site to help at any point in the process, and developers will have the opportunity to show off what they’ve been working on.

So, how to score an invite: Your guess is as good as mine! If you were one of the smart ones who shelled out $1,500 for the early access to Google Glass you're on the list. Or you could try pinging Googler Aygul Zagidullina and hope you get lucky! Well, for those of you who don't make it, here's a pic of Sergey Brin sporting his Google Glasses on the subway.

In other news, the NYC EDC is partnering with the Lawrence Field Center for Entrepreneurship at Baruch College to create Competition THRIVE, and they're seeking original, innovative strategies and programs that help immigrant entrepreneurs succeed in business. In Round 1, $25,000 will be awarded to five semi-finalists to pilot their program and create a business plan. And in Round 2, $100,000 will be awarded to one grand prize winner to further scale their program. Submission period is February 1 to March 7. For more information, check out the website or email competitionthrive@baruch.cuny.edu.

On January 30, my buddy Haithem is organizing the Lemonade Heroes Yacht Party. It's gonna be a crazy night of dancing, drinking, mixing and mingling--on a yacht.
You'll be getting photographed on a red carpet, and you'll have a shot at an audition for an entrepreneurship TV series and book.

More stuff you don't wanna miss this week: AppNexus Speaker Series (with Fab.com CEO Jason Goldberg) on the 23rd, PandoMonthly Presents (with Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson) on the 24th and Amusemi's 1 Year Anniversary Party+Dinner on the 26th.

Last week my buddy Charlie Todd & the folks at Improv Everywhere organized their twelfth Annual No Pants Subway Ride. Over 4,000 participants showed up. Here's the recap and video. And my friends Jen and Allison are back with another hilarious edition of Blogologues, playing this week on the 24th, 25th and 26th at Under St Marks (and yes, there will be giveaways!).

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

DUMBO Improvement District Annual Meeting
All members of the DUMBO community are invited to hear the latest on hurricane recovery efforts and learn what's in store for the neighborhood in 2013. The coveted DUMBO "Magic Feather" awards will be given to Rachel Haot (New York's chief digital officer), Susan Feldman (artistic director, St. Ann's Warehouse) and Jerry Hultin (president, NYU-Poly).
Tuesday (Jan. 22), 5 p.m. @ Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street

Next Top Makers: The Business of Design
Join the creators of New York’s Next Top Makers for an evening of education, guidance, and networking. Hear from IDEO storytelling gurus why good design doesn’t always speak for itself, and learn about the role of a designer in a world of 3D printers.
Tuesday (Jan. 22), 7 p.m. @ 3DEA Pop-Up Store @ Eventi Hotel, 835 6th Avenue

The Future of Education #1: New Models for 21st Century Learning
Panelists include Brad Hargreaves (founding partner, General Assembly), Kane Sarhan (cofounder, Enstitute), Juliette LaMontagne (founder & director, Breaker) and Abigail Besdin (head of Skillshare's education team).
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 6:30 p.m. @ Centre For Social Innovation Pop-Up Space, 601 W. 26th Street, #360

AppNexus Speaker Series
Brian O'Kelley (CEO, AppNexus) will host a fireside chat with Jason Goldberg (CEO, Fab.com) and Jared Cluff (VP Marketing, Fab.com).
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 6:30 p.m. @ AppNexus, 28 W. 23rd Street

How to Build Great Communities: Lets Collaborate!
With Sheila Karaszewski (community manager, Airbnb), Tony Bacigalupo (cofounder, New Work City), Andrew Wagner (director & editor-in-chief, Krrb) and James Wahba (cofounder, Projective Space). Moderated by Melissa Young (founder, Let's Collaborate!)
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 7 p.m. @ Projective Space L.E.S., 72 Allen Street

#ArtsTech 4 Year Anniversary Party!
Open Bar with 3 Pernod Absinthe cocktails from 7-8 pm. Variety of grilled panini appetizers. Photobooth by Styleblaster. Tunes by DJ Winslow Porter. Video art by Sabrina Ratte, Mr. Div, Yoshi Sodeoka and Andreas Nicholas Fischer
Wednesday (Jan. 23), 7 p.m. @ The Counting Room, 44 Berry Street, Brooklyn

PandoMonthly Presents
A fireside chat with Chad Dickerson (CEO, Etsy)
Thursday (Jan. 24), 6 p.m. @ Projective L.E.S., 72 Allen Street

dd:COLLECTIVE - The Changing Retail Environment (Presented by Digital DUMBO)
Featured speakers include Philippe von Borries (Co-Founder, Refinery29), Keith George (General Manager, Gilt Man by Gilt Groupe) and Claire Mazur (Co-Founder, Of a Kind).
Thursday (Jan 24), 6:30 p.m. @ Huge, 45 Main St , Ste 220, Brooklyn

Dinner, Cupcakes, Wine & Technology!
Introducing the inaugural NJ Tech Gals meetup!
Thursday (Jan 24), 7 p.m. @ Hoboken Business Center, 50 Harrison Street (2nd Fl), Hoboken

Nike+ Accelerator (powered by TechStars) Recruiting Tour
Join the team from Nike and TechStars to hear about the Nike+ Accelerator. Some local quantified self demos. And the team from Nike will be bringing along some SWAG, including some Nike+ FuelBands!
Thursday (Jan 24), 7 p.m. @ TechStars NYC HQ , 36 Cooper Square, 6th Fl.

Power Breakfast
With Susan Feldman (cofounder, One Kings Lane)
Friday (Jan. 25), 8 a.m. @ Fordham Graduate School of Business, 113 W. 60th Street, 12th Fl.

NYC Mobile Startup Weekend
Where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and buddying entrepreneurs gather together to share ideas, form teams and spend the weekend building and launching a startup.
Friday (Jan. 25), 6 p.m. @ WeWork Soho Lounge, 154 Grand Street

2013 Brooklyn Inventgenuity Festival: Digital By Hand
A popular annual winter celebration of making things for kids and their parents. With public projects and workshops led by Beam Center’s faculty of artists, engineers and big thinkers. This year’s theme: Digital by Hand.
Saturday (Jan. 26), 11 a.m. @ The Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen Street

Amusemi 1 Year Anniversary Party + Dinner
Celebrate the anniversary of our first startup dining event. Register for Amusemi to get on the guest list.
Saturday (Jan. 26), 7 p.m. @ TBD

More events on the horizon...
TEDxBroadway: Industry leaders envision the future of Broadway on Jan. 28 @ New World Stages
NYC Gaming January: Demo Night on Jan. 29 @ Microsoft
Brooklyn Tech Meetup with Victoria Brown on Jan. 29 @ Feil Hall, Brooklyn Law School
Lemonade Heroes Yacht Party featuring a chance to Audition for a TV Series! on Jan. 30 @ Hornblower Inifinity
Entrepreneurship in the Beer Industry on Jan. 30 @ Professor Thoms
dd:SOCIAL - 4 Year Anniversary & dd:A-LIST Crowdfunding Launch on Jan. 31 @ The DUMBO Loft
Business Insider Presents: Social Commerce Summit on Feb. 06 @ Pier 60
UX Design and User Experience Optimization Trends on Feb. 06 @ Anchin
Hearst Fashion Hackathon 2013 on Feb. 09 @ Hearst
Social Media Week NY 2013 on Feb. 18 @ Metropolitan Pavilion
AIPAC Technology Division: Launch Event w/Dan Senor on Feb. 27 @ Bloomberg Tower

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

So we survived! The Mayan-predicted end-of-the-world-armaggedon-pocalypse was a no-show. Now it's time to party! Of course, I still have a dozen cans of anti-zombie spray lying around... interested? :)

In the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Mayor Bloomberg and 750 other mayors have come together to create Demand A Plan to fight for gun safety. A ton of leaders from the tech industry, both here in New York and in Silicon Valley, have joined the cause including Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Marc Benioff (SalesForce), Evan Williams (Twitter), Dennis Crowley (Foursquare), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz), Laurene Jobs, Randi Zuckerberg and many others. And a large-scale social media effort is underway, similar to how the industry came together during SOPA/PIPA.

New York City recently announced the H.E.L.M. (Hire Expand in Lower Manhattan) contest to bring more startups into Manhattan’s growing tech scene. It promises up to $1.2M (five cash grants of up to $250,000 each) to startups looking to reside in Lower Manhattan. The application deadline has been extended to noon of December 31.

Heard of Socratic Labs? They're an ed-tech accelerator based here in New York City, creating a community for education innovators. Deadline for applying for the first batch is December 31.

Here's some stuff I've been watching recently ..... Well-respected VC Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital talking about the venture capital business. GRP Partners' Mark Suster elaborating on where content, media and monetization are headed. Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson's insightful talk and Q&A at the Enterprise Tech meetup, where he talked about network effects, ankle biters and "shorting the entire big, fat, old, cynical, rip-off artist enterprise software business." Jason Calacanis interviewing XPrize and Singularity University founder Peter Diamandis, who talked about tackling big issues through entrepreneurship including literacy, alzheimers, earthquake detection and curing cancer.

Random nugget: "I'll nurse a single joke for years, amending, abridging and reworking it incrementally, to get the thing just so." - Jerry Seinfeld in a recent feature in the NY Times.

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

Demo and Get Feedback
Designed to help founders get feedback on their ideas.
Tuesday (Dec. 25), 6:30 p.m. @ WeWork Labs, 175 Varick Street

Review BiohackersNYC 2012 & discuss 2013
Wednesday (Dec. 26), 6 p.m. @ Hu Kitchen, 78 5th Avenue

ConnectNYC Fiber Challenge: Application Deadline
Small and medium-sized businesses across the five boroughs can apply for high-speed broadband at their location. Winners will receive free fiber build-out to their place of business, an overall value of up to $7 million for all winning businesses.
Thursday (Dec. 27), 9 a.m. @ To be decided

Growth Hacking Workshop: Lean Marketing for Startups
With Mattan Griffel (founder and CEO at The Front Labs, Partner at Grow/Hack).
Thursday (Dec. 27), 6 p.m. @ General Assembly East, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

The What and Why of APIs
Learn all about APIs from one of the industry's leading specialists, Matt LeMay (Platform Manager, bitly).
Thursday (Dec. 27), 6 p.m. @ General Assembly East, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Home for the Holidays Brooklyn!
Bringing together Etsy employees with local sellers, buyers, and friends of the handmade artisan community. A festive gathering with drinks & food.
Thursday (Dec. 27), 6 p.m. @ Etsy Labs, 55 Washington Street, #712

Reinvent the Payphone Meeting #2
Thursday (Dec. 27), 6:30 p.m. @ The Lab, 122 West 26th Street, 5th Fl.

DUMBO Tech Breakfast Meetup
Friday (Dec. 28), 8:30 a.m. @ DUMBO Kitchen, 108 Jay Street, Brooklyn

More events on the horizon...
The Product Group January 2013 on Jan. 3 @ MTV Networks / Viacom
Foursquare Hackathon 2012: Connect all the Apps! on Jan. 5 @ Foursquare HQ
A Conversation with Adaptly Founder Nikhil Sethi on Jan. 7 @ General Assembly East
#BARK Presents: New Year New You | What Can We Learn From Brands That Pivot on Jan. 8 @ Yotel
Invasion of The Hackathons: Creating Unique Opportunities for Entrepreneurs on Jan. 8 @ NYU Poly
January 2013 NY Tech Meetup on Jan. 8 @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
NJ Tech Meetup 32 on Jan. 10 @ Stevens Institute Of Technology
Startup GC Panel #2 on Jan. 10 @ General Assembly
Enterprise Technology Meetup on Jan. 15 @ Cooley

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! And Happy Holidays! :)

Soundcloud CEO Mr. Ljung (Photo: Twitter.com)

SoundCloud Busts Out Of Beta At this point, SoundCloud is basically the audio version of YouTube. A private-beta version of the site launched earlier this year called Next and the newest version integrates a bunch of those social features that the company hopes will help its users discover new music. “From today, ‘Next’ is now simply SoundCloud,” said Alexander Ljung, founder and CEO of SoundCloud in a press release sent to Betabeat. “It’s a platform for people to discover new, original music and audio, for creators to build audiences, and for everyone to share what they hear whether online or on mobile.”

The company claims that users now post over 10 hours of music and audio every minute while reaching over 180 million people. That’s a staggering 8% of the entire internet population, every month. On December 6th, mobile users will be able to enjoy reposts, updated mobile search, and UX updates on both iOS and Android SoundCloud apps.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It Online dating site HowAboutWe is now partnering with AARP to launch a new dating site for 50+ adults. Although millenials might find it the concept hard to swallow, it has potential to be one of the biggest sites out of HowAboutWe’s 32 partnered sites. The 50+ demographic is a huge growing dating demographic because of a huge increase in the divorce rate for people over 50. Hey, everybody needs some love!

Remember, Remember, The Facebook Of Last December Timehop, the app that reminds you of all the social media memories you made in your not-so-distant past, has a bunch of updates dropping in its latest update. You can now share pictures from your camera roll in your Timehop feed. First Foursquare checkins are now integrated into your memories too. Just when everyone forgot you were once mayor of Tom and Jerry’s…

You Must Be This Rich To Ride Free Valet, the travel membership site that offers you rewards and guides for $199 a year, told Betabeat over email that it's now in more than 52 cities and more than 100 hotels. They've offering free rides to the airport until February 1st for members staying at any of their New York hotels. The deal is also being offered to New York members who are on their way to stay at a Valet site somewhere else.

We Like To (Watch Them) Move It Move It Yesterday, Unpakt, the site that lets you compare movers, kicked off its "Innovators on the Move" series. It features tech entrepreneurs reflecting on recent moves in their lives. The first video in the series features the wedding planning tool, Lover.ly, founder Kellee Khalil. Lover.ly is moving into a brand new New York office and the video chronicles the move.

Innovators on the Move: Kellee from Unpakt on Vimeo.

Etsy Goes Full Mobile Etsy has officially released an Android version of its mobile app, after last week's launch of the company's iPad app. In a press release sent to Betabeat, Etsy said that nearly a quarter of its mobile web visitors come from Android devices all over the world. To celebrate the occasion, you should buy yourself this Android mascot cookie jar.

Big Money To Nice People Google is trying hard to tip the scales more toward good than evil. The company has just launched the Global Impact Awards, which honors nonprofits using technology to tackle problems. The inaugural recipients include a $5 million gift to charity: water, a $5 million prize to Donors Choose, and $2.4 million to Givedirectly, a much younger company than the others.

Lose That Basic Black Jackthreads and designer Adam Gianotti have just released the new collection of their line, Viveshirt. The team has also just put their fall collection from their line Goodale on sale. There's a lot of French terry in both collections and some perfect pieces for that "fancy hoodie" look.

Tweeters Be Shopping Some of those absymal Black Friday stats may be misleading. While IBM reported that 0.34 percent of all online sales over Thanksgiving weekend came from social sites, Jirafe, an ecommerce analytics platform found much higher numbers. Using their unique analytics, the company found that 1.27 percent of sales come from social sites like Facebook and Twitter. A key difference between their analytics is that Jirafe looks at the social media profiles of shoppers. Say for instance a customer buys a product after clicking through from a tweet featuring a new deal. Jirafe can track this data while IBM only looks at ads.

Consumer Cash Flow Consmr, a mobile app that provides ratings and reviews for products, announced earlier this week that it has secured $565,000 in seed funding. The round was led by Lerer Ventures with participation from IA Ventures and MESA+. In a press release sent to Betabeat, CEO Ryan Charles said, “Consmr is well positioned to mobilize the wisdom of the crowds and extend it to everyday product decisions.”

Mr. Dickerson (Photo: Twitter.com)

Lots Of Tiny Wicker Puppets Sold Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson took to the company's blog to address his craft-obsessed minons and report big new numbers. Etsy recently hit 20 million members across over 200 countries. In the first week of November, they passed the $700 million sales mark and their direct checkout system has now processed over $100 million in transactions. By the end of the year, Etsy projects that it will have sold over 100 million items in the company's history.

The company is also going all out for the holiday season and expects to have its best month yet. It's running a multi-million-dollar online advertising campaign and opening a Etsy Holiday Shop in SoHo from November 29th through December 8th. SoHo though? Isn't Greenpoint or Williamsburg more on target with the Etsy brand?

Chu Bets Against Zynga Betable has already announced partnerships with big game companies and is right on the path to become the Spotify of online gambling and pass its closest rival, Zynga. Ya-Bing Chu, a former VP and GM of Zynga's mobile division, has now joined Betable as the company's new Chief Product Officer. At Zynga, he was responsible for operating Words with Friends and Scramble with Friends. Mr. Chu explains the move in an essay on Betable's blog, where he says, "I realized that Betable was the only frictionless way to enter the real money market, which is revolutionary."

Make It, Don't Break It Mayor Bloomberg and NYCEDC have opened submissions for their New York's Next Top Makers challenge. Competitors will have to create a product with commercial potential which includes consumer products, equipment, furniture and lighting, soft goods, packaging, interaction, transportation, DIY (kits) or something else. There are six $5,950 prizes and an $11,000 grand prize up for grabs. The deadline is in three months, so get to brainstorming right away.

Tumblr Goes Native Tumblr just released an update to its iOS app with a completely redesigned dashboard. The app has gone fully native and now finally runs a lot smoother: it runs faster than before, photos are a lot bigger, and GIFs play automatically when swiped. Better GIF's on your phone people, this is the stuff of the future.

Where's Our Food? There aren't many differences between the major players of the online food ordering game. But GrubHub has just changed the game a little bit with the beta release of its Track Your Grub feature. Similar to Domino's Pizza Tracker, Track Your Grub lets you know what the status of your order is during every step of the way. You'll get texts when your food is expected to arrive and when it leaves the restaurant. In certain areas, you can even watch your food make the trip to your apartment in real time on the maps feature. Seamless just got a little nervous.

Shop Like No One's Watching Sole Society, the West Coast based site that lets you order shoes direct from the manufacturer, has announced its first celebrity collection with two-time Dancing With The Stars champion Julianne Hough. On the site, Hough says, "Every girl needs a sexy leather jacket and a cutout heel." Noted.

Big Data Gets Big Money The social data platform, Datasift, has just secured $15 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners and Northgate Capital and Daher Capital also contributed. Rory O’Driscoll, the managing director of Scale Venture Partners, said in a press release sent to Betabeat, “Great companies make hard problems simple for the end user, and DataSift has done that with its game-changing visual interface."

Sad Turkey Daily deals site are a dime a dozen and so 8Coupons, a site that thinks of itself as "Kayak for deals," lets you see all daily deals across the web at one glance. The site's efficiency was proved this week when David Burke at Bloomingdales tried to pawn off its special turkey dinners on nine different deal sites at the same time. Seems a little desperate to go for nine sites at once.

Poke Your Way To Africa Plyfe, the game that rewards you for using social media with real prizes like Lady Gaga tickets, is about to go mobile. The site, which raised one million dollars in funding last March, has also announced an unexpected new partner--the United Nations. Users can now win opportunities to do development work in Africa. That should lead to some great new submissions for Gurl Goes To Africa.

Bad Guys Still Temporarily Nice Time Warner Cable, the unexpected nice guys of Hurricane Sandy, has announced that it will automatically credit many local residential and business customers whose services were impacted. The company says that it will also waive any fees or penalties for equipment, such as set-top boxes and cable modems, which were lost, damaged or destroyed as a result of the storm. In a press release sent to Betabeat, John Quigley, regional VP of operations for Time Warner Cable’s New York City market, said, “By posting credits automatically to customers’ accounts in the hardest-hit parts of our service area, we hope these affected residents and businesses will have one less call to make as they recover from the storm.”

Mr. Dickerson. (Twitter.com)

Worst nightmare for workday Skype gossipers: It appears until very recently there was a vulnerability that made it possible for anyone who knows your email to hijack your account. UPDATED: Skype says it's been resolved. [TNW]

Do you fret about the amount of info you've shared with Facebook? Think for a minute about your Google Search history taken as a whole, and you'll have a panic attack.  [Buzzfeed]

As we head into the holidays, an update from Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson reveals that the community is now 20 million users strong and did more than $700 million in sales in 2012. By the end of the year, total all-time marketplace sales will surpass 100 million products. The company is also doing a holiday popup shop in Soho this year--right next to Dior. Fancy! [Etsy]

Are startups funded in the early-stage investing boom starting to run out of money? [Business Insider]

Judging from this video about the Jawbone UP, wearable computing requires a whole lot of trial and error in the design process. [Fuse Project]

Mr. Wenig

Ebay announced two new product features today to help better position itself as a competitor to ecommerce sites like Amazon and Etsy. With Ebay Now, an iPhone app, customers are able to order things from their mobile devices and have them delivered anywhere they choose, usually within an hour. Ebay Now has been tested in San Francisco. An Ebay rep declined to elaborate on when the feature would be available in New York.

The site also announced an interface redesign to make search and browsing easier, as well as a new Pinterest-like feature called "Feed" that, as Ebay CTO Mark Carges said, "is a little like creating a newsfeed, but instead of search it offers visual shopping inspiration." Users can follow brands, styles, bands--basically any topic aggregated on Ebay--and streamline it into a visual shopping board, a lot like Pinterest, where they can easily click through and purchase items with a seamlessly integrated Ebay-Paypal account.

Even though Ebay is essentially working to compete directly with powerhouse Amazon, by positioning itself as a partner with brands and not a competitor, it strives to be seen as a much more appealing option for sellers. In this way, the new Ebay is almost competing with seller-friendly platforms like Etsy.

The news was announced at the Highline Stages on the Western edge of Manhattan, where journalists and brand representatives gathered to listen to Ebay reps launch a new mission to help shape the future of the booming ecommerce market. The normally spacious Highline Stages were decorated to look like a high-tech space pod, about 15 large screens surrounding attendees in a 360-degree ring. When Betabeat first arrived, it was clear we would need to take advantage of the free Blue Bottle Coffee and breakfast foods set up on a fancily decorated table in order to withstand whatever it was we were about to experience.

In the presentation room, low-slung leather white chairs that Captain Picard would be comfortable in were positioned throughout the space. Soon after slurping down our coffee, the presentation began with a series of customer testimonials. As the videos played, attendees had to swivel in their futuristic chairs and crane their necks to watch them, projected onto different screens in the 360-degree display.

Soon Devin Wenig, Ebay's president, took center stage. Betabeat does not know if Mr. Wenig went to Penn but he looks like someone who went to Penn.

"Today is about the future of commerce, the future of retail and the future of how consumers shop," Mr. Wenig opened, without being grandiose at all.

"Our model and our 17 years of experience set us apart, uniquely positioning us to enable commerce globally and locally, but not to compete and not to disrupt traditional players."

Ms. Parham

At this point, Mr. Wenig continued to ask awkward questions like "How many of you use Ebay?" while the audience half-heartedly played along, a smattering of diehards wiggling their fingers in the air in agreement with his statements.

"Consumers want insight," Mr. Wenig continued. "They want personal curated experiences relevant for them controlled by them. Consumers want experiences that are not intrusive but inspiring. Search results are not enough. We want to make moments of inspiration instantly shoppable. That is what Ebay intends to deliver."

Ebay CMO Richelle Parham was up next to explain how Ebay intends to use insights and statistics collected from its customers to offer this personalized, Pinterest-like experience.

"It's all about getting a better understanding of what our customers need and want," Ms. Parham said. "What we have is closed loop data, insights into the entire customer decision journey for more than 100M active users. Insights into more than $2,000 worth of transactions every second every day."

"The information we have about our community is the equivalent to what a brand and retailer has," she continued. "And we have the same amount of data that credit card companies have. We have the power of these two datasets combined. We're practically the only player in the world who has access to this type of information about our customers."

At this point, Betabeat began to feel slightly creeped out, looking around to make sure no one was coming to tap us on the shoulder and offer us a swig of Kool Aid.

Next came Ebay CTO Mark Carges, who walked us through Ebay's new UI as well as how the Feed will work. It looks almost identical to a Pinterest page, but only curates Ebay products and allows users to easily click through to purchase them.

It's clear from all of Ebay's updates that it intends to position itself as a direct competitor to other online marketplaces. Considering consumers still think of Ebay primarily as a janky-looking auction site, pivoting to take on Amazon will take some convincing. Perhaps the new, prettier logo, which also officially launched today, will help.

It is 2012, right? (Photo: Etsy)

It's tough being a platform, especially one that wants to be open but maintain a certain community identity. In the last six months or so, questions have started to bubble up about whether Etsy can balance its DIY ethos with the demands of scalability. Even so, the DUMBO-based startup has kept intact much of its friendly, show-love-it's-the-Brooklyn-way aura.

Which is why this Change.org petition (spotted here) against the sale of "Golliwog" dolls on the site is likely to make everyone involved feel a little awkward.

Golliwog dolls, for those poorly versed in the tropes of overt racism, are a particular type of rag doll popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the English-speaking world (less so the U.S. than the U.K. and the Commonwealth countries). The trademark features you might recognize from, you know, minstrelsy: Ultra-black skin, bug eyes, great big smiley mouths.

Basically, if you were bothered by Girls, clicking through might actually give you the vapors.

The petition's author, Raquel Mack, writes:

 Etsy is refusing to follow the policies that they implemented for themselves early last year (2011) that would prohibit the sale of “…items that promote, support, or glorify hatred toward or otherwise demean people based upon: race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation…” read the rest in the prohibited section here.

When Betabeat reached out to Etsy via email, a spokesperson had this to say:

We can't comment on specific cases, but we do review every report that we get from the community and evaluate them on an individual basis. Etsy policies are written to balance community values with a desire to allow creative expression.

Since the statement implied that Etsy had reviewed the claims mentioned in the petition, we asked about the internal decision-making process to continue selling items, but were told, "I'm sorry but I can't offer that at the moment. If anything changes I'll be sure to let you know."

A quick survey of Etsy for "golliwog" turns up quite a few of the offending items. Most, however, are vintage. It's possible that because these are historical artifacts, Etsy has chosen not to police the sale of those items, as disturbing as that stage of history was. And it does get tricky when big platforms wade into what their users might choose to post--start policing one type of offense, and suddenly you've got to moderate everything. But it's also worth noting that some of these listings involve disturbingly cutesy language. A couple are actually modern. The petition's author claims many of these items have been reported "numerous times to Etsy's integrity team" but haven't gone away.

Searches of the site also turn up a relatively wide selection of vintage "Little Black Sambo" merchandise, "Mammy"-themed home decor and "pickaninny" items. But again, those are relics from another time.

The petition currently has 79 signatures and is ticking rapidly upward toward its goal of 500 names.